DTFM: a Flexible Model for Schedulability Analysis of Real-Time Applications on NoC-based Architectures
Résumé
Many-core processors are expected to be hardware targets to support the execution of real-time applications. In a many-core
processor, cores communicate through a Network-On-Chip (NoC), which offers high bandwidth and scalability, but also introduces contentions
leading to additional variability to task execution times. Such contentions also strongly increase the pessimistic trend of worst case execution time
estimation. Consequently, modeling and analysis of network contentions interferences on many-core processors is a challenge to support real-
time applications. In this article, we formalize a dual task and flow model called DTFM. From the specification of a real-time application
composed of a set of tasks and their communication dependencies, DTFM allows us to compute flow requirements and to assess predictability of
the tasks. DTFM is extensible enough to be adapted to various NoCs and task models, allowing designers to compare candidate software and NoC
architectures. Furthermore, we introduce an original validation approach based on the cross-use of a task level real-time scheduling analysis tool
and a cycle-accurate SystemC NoC simulator.